Uncle Tupelo - 89/93: An Anthology
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Free Music Notes for 89/93: An Anthology
Free Music Review: Not the best possible collection of Uncle Tupelo music.
Hit: 3 Stars
For completists, it's worth it for the live tracks, but for everyone else, the selection of tracks is far from comprehensive.I don't just mean that it's missing my favorite song, although it is. (It's "Punch Drunk", by the way.)
I mean that it seems to be weighted towards "bar songs" to the exclusion of much of the bands' other work. If you had never heard the band before, this anthology might convince you they were just another bar band. It robs them of their depth.
It's a shame, because depth and range were Uncle Tupelo's strengths as a band.
I'd recommend picking up either "Still Feel Gone" or "Anodyne" over this collection. Both albums are better introductions to their music.
Free Music Review: Faux accents don't fly.
Hit: 2 Stars
Lyrics look good on paper but, are hurt by a solid mediocre voice with a faux southern accent I could do without. The vocals could have been more like the familiar Indie-hipster-rock-nasal-geek-Muppet voices used so often in groups The lyrics and music often sound like a Yankees' interpretation of a music he (they) never really knew by not living in The South. The players know their instruments and the clichés and play them as if learned in a class. I really don't get the punk influence I heard of much. They do often sound Indie-rock. I also have not responded well to Gram parsons. After hearing artists like Emmylou Harris, who turned out an incredible rock/country LP "The Wrecking Ball", and possibly the real first alt-country artist, Mickey Newbury, who used a large palate of beautiful compositions on par with The Beatles, it's hard to be impressed by the "Alt" of Tupelo or Gram. I also like Lyle Lovett more than those "innovators".
The two albums I checked out are "Anthology" and "Anodyne", Anthology being difficult to get through twice. I can't get beyond the fake accent and the overly "sittin'-on-the-front-porch" feel to nearly every song. Pat your hands softly and sip a PBR. There is not enough oomph to any of the tracks and just not any staying power for me, save the stale cliché of a song overstated and over....
The last half of "Anodyne" felt glummer. I have to say that at most was a little more pure. Still, it does not have the emotional impact or beauty of a fairly comparable artist, Mark Kozelek, also of the beloved Red House Painters.
Free Music Review: Horrible Selection Emasculates a Great Band
Hit: 1 Stars
Uncle Tupelo pioneered sincere country-punk, balancing the emotionality of the two without every sacrificing one to the other. In other words, unlike earlier "cow-punk," or most Bloodshot bands, UT weren't simply ridiculing country music, but celebrating it for what it was. All of their early songs deal with drinking, despair, drinking, surburbanization, desperation, dead-end jobs, and drinking, in that order. Later, the band moved toward a more traditional country-rock sound, but they retained their fiery edge nonetheless.This selection stinks because it chooses to emphasize the one truly anomalous release out of their original four albums, the folky "March 16-20." This wasn't a bad album, but considering that Tweedy and Farrar wrote only half the songs (the rest being renditions of various folksongs), the record just doesn't stand up to their other, more original releases. Unfortunately, "Anthology" follows the template of "March 16-20" by presenting the softer side of UT, uniformly choosing quiet acoustic numbers over noisy rockers, and thereby distorting the band's legacy, creating an image of the band as folky hippy types, rather than populist punk-country artists.
As for the various rarities on "Anthology," they are severely marred by the fact that the cd is not mastered uniformly; ie, The volume fluctuates between a number of tracks, and "I Got Drunk" is terribly quiet in comparison with the rest of the songs,-- I question whether the record company even mastered this song from the original demo.
In fine, this cd is purely for completists. If you're new to UT, I'd suggest "Anodyne," their final record.